Europe: The Final Countdown

5 more days until we’re heading to Europe!!!!

Me on the inside. (Photo by bruce mars on Pexels.com)

We decided we wanted to try to travel light since we would be traveling on trains and such every few days. No one wants to lug a heavy suitcase around. We researched travel backpacks a while ago and found the Osprey brand made a backpack that was carry-on approved. We saved the backpacks in Amazon and watched the prices for months. Original price is $160 each. We visited REI recently to see them in person and make sure the sizing was right and found that they were on sale! We checked on Amazon and they were also on sale with free shipping AND I had a $100 Amazon gift card laying around so it made sense to buy them online and save some money.

Having a little patience to track prices for a while meant that instead of paying the original price of $320 for 2 backpacks we got to pay $161.25 for 2 bags. I’m gonna call that a win.

I got the Fairview 40 and my husband got the Farpoint 40. This is our first travel backpack. I’ve never lived out of a backpack before or have gone away for this long. It’s going to be a challenge to fit everything in that I want but I’ll definitely be reviewing the bags after we get back. I’m one of those people who always comes home from a travel with 3 shirts and 2 skirts I never wore that I carried for nothing. But the one time I was conscience of not over packing I under packed and ran out of shirts. It’s something I need to work on. But we’ll find out soon enough if this is a good idea or we should’ve stuck with larger bags. No one wants to stop sightseeing to wash underwear, am I right? Also we can always ship things back in a box no? Is sending a package cheaper than checking a bag on a plane nowadays?

A little worried about this

A couple of days ago I started to pack just to make sure that I wasn’t forgetting anything. I took out the bag and realized that in my mind, it had kept growing as the days passed and I realized in reality it did not. I have no idea how I’m going to fit everything in here. What was I thinking?! I’m not a millennial! I like to have options! After laying all my clothes out and writing out a list of outfits for each day, I determined I could bring enough clothes to get me to Berlin before I had to do laundry.

I used my new packing cubes and was pretty amazed at just how much I fit in. Right now I was able to close the bag but there’s not a lot of room left over. I still have 2 shoes to fit in and bras and underwear. Have to do some adjusting but I think it will be ok. Just worried about how we will carry back any souvenirs.

The other stuff we need to purchase for our travels were:

Outlet converts

Pouch for our electronics/wires/ etc.

Mini flat iron

Small backpack for daily travel

Walking sneakers

None of these are a must have (maybe the converter) but we had birthdays last month so I got all these things as presents. The only other stuff we need is really some toiletries. Other than that we have to put the final touches on our itinerary and finish packing.

I can’t believe that it’s been almost a year of thinking about this trip and 6 months of studying maps and museums and spreadsheets. I’m so ready to get out there already and start seeing things. I’ll definitely be posting some blogs about all our cities. Here’s our final itinerary:

Paris

Brussels

Amsterdam

Berlin

Athens

Agion area (Greece)

Poros (small Greek island for 2 days of all inclusive drinking and eating)

1 day in Athens before returning home

Travel For Broke Ass People Who Just Want To Have A Good Time

So this week while looking through sites to get an idea for places to eat and drink during our Europe vacation, I became really frustrated when I realized that over and over again they would recommend places that were either way too nice or way too expensive. Let’s be honest, when you’re playing tourist you usually don’t have time to go back to the hotel to change before dinner so you typically have comfortable shoes on and are a little sweaty. If you’re neither of those things, then you’re not touristing right.So it hit me: can we just have a site called “Travel For Broke Ass People Who Just Wanna Have A Good Time”.

Help me, I’m poor!         Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

If I ever write a travel exclusive blog, that’s what the title is. Copy-written. Don’t even try to take it. Tips and tricks on finding the best deals in town, neighborhood gems with good food, the best happy hours. Maybe some sample itineraries for the best sightseeing for your time and budget—that’s all anyone wants! Unless you’re rich and don’t care about money.But as I was thinking about it, I realized that talking about those little gems results in a catch-22: you get to go to a cool spot that only the locals know about, but if people start going, then it becomes not so special and not so cheap.I’m always torn between wanting to research places to eat ahead of time to make sure we pick a good place and wanting to wing it once we’re there and see where the day takes us. There’s nothing worse than walking into a random place that looks good then leaving with an empty wallet and wishing you never went down that street. Now, online reviews aren’t foolproof, I’ve been tricked by them before (Greek place in Connecticut, I’m talking to you) but there’s nothing worse than the disappointment you feel when you pick a bad place on vacation and waste an opportunity to eat all the wonderful things that city has to offer.I now write down places to eat and drink and make note of the area in case we end up there tired and hungry and in need of a drink but we’re also open to just stumbling across something and going in. That’s how I found The Green Dragon in Murfreesboro (outside of Nashville). I didn’t have a plan for that time because I didn’t know where we were going to end up (or how hungry we would be) but it was one of my most delightful finds. I mean, a little Hobbit themed hole in the wall with a delightful mushroom soup, how can you go wrong?

C’mon. How cute is this.

Travel Planning: Tips and Tools

How I currently feel planning this trip. Photo by Startup Stock Photos on Pexels.com

I feel like all the research I’ve ever done has been preparing me for this Europe trip. Actually, I love research. I love taking notes and I love solving puzzles. Travel is just a puzzle that you need to solve. And the prep work ahead of time leads to a more streamlined, easy going experience when you’re actually there instead of trying to figure out what time that museum closes or go to a restaurant to find out it doesn’t exist anymore. I’m trying to map out everything up front so all we have to do is follow the plan and have fun. Although I have to admit that after 7 months of planning this, I’m pretty much over it. I have all the city maps seared into my brain, I’m over redoing the itinerary (for the 5th time!) to fit in reservations we had to make ahead of time, and doing daily Euro to US dollar conversions is making my head hurt. I just want it to happen already so I can relax. 18 more days!

Below are some useful things that helped when doing my research:

EXPEDIA

 I will always use Expedia. Although going through Orbitz for a couple things made me realize they’re the same company so it’s really annoying that Orbitz would give me a 15% off coupon for hotels but Expedia doesn’t honor it. I always price compare buying flights and hotel separately vs. a package. Sometimes I find that it’s cheaper to do it separately. Or I would buy the flight with Expedia and use the 15% off with Orbitz to get the hotel.

And do yourself a favor and ALWAYS use Ebates or Coupon Cabin for some cashback. It doesn’t come in until after the travels are done but even if it adds up to $10, that’s $10 more than you had before you went on vacation and spent it all on German beer.(Here is my referral code for ebates  if you want to sign up and the site for Coupon Cabin)Like I mentioned in the previous post, you can save hotels you like in a list on Expedia for future reference which helped a lot because I first saved the hotels then researched the area they were in. If they were too far from where we needed to be, I took it off the list which led me to narrow down my options pretty quickly instead of scrolling through hundreds of hotels each time I went on and not remembering if I liked it or not.I tried to find hotels that had overall good reviews but also offered things like free breakfast and/or WiFi. Breakfast included would save us on some food costs and also time in the morning so we can go straight to sightseeing.

CREDIT CARDS WITH POINTS

It helps that I have a Citibank Expedia Credit Card that gains me Expedia points which I’ve used on this years’ travels and it’s no fee which is even better. I used the points from our Texas and Nashville trips back a few months when I was booking hotels for Europe and definitely saved some money. The only downside is that you don’t get the points until after your travel so I’ll have a bunch when we return from Europe to use on our next adventure. 

GOOGLE

How did people plan vacations before you could Google things?! You only had a tour book to tell you what to do when you got there which means you went to touristy places because everyone was reading the same damn book! I always use the city’s tourism site and then use TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet to find the big attractions and sights. I start making my list and write what time they are open and the admission price. I write down every attractions I would be interested in doing that way, again, I have a smaller list of my highlights and “must sees” to work with instead of being overwhelmed by everything a city has offers. Then I narrow it down by the order of importance and how many we can fit into the time we have in that city. I also start checking out places to eat/drink and write them down as well (after checking the ratings of course).Some things I use when doing a general Google search:

• TripAdvisor
• Yelp
• Lonely Planet
• searching:  ‘things to do in (city)’ or ‘best places to eat in (city)’–this usually pulls up some blogs with info you can use
• TimeOut–For major cities this site usually can tell you what events are happening around the city for the following weeks and gives you places to eat and drink

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As I’m doing research, I put all my findings on a spreadsheet (which would probably look crazy to someone else if they looked at it but it makes sense to me) to keeps me organized and act as my quick reference guide. Once I have all the puzzle pieces written down, then I start plugging them into our itinerary working around flighta and train departures/arrivals. It’s really exciting when you start seeing how your day is going to go in another city:4pm: Arc de Triomphe5:30pm: Walk to Eiffel Tower6:30pm: Grab some Macaroons at Laduree7:30 pm: Dinner in MontmatreDoesn’t that sound amazing??

Photo by Eugene Dorosh on Pexels.com